Militarism. The word has a faintly anachronistic ring. It conjures up images of Prussia in Bismarck's day, or perhaps Hitler's Third Reich. It suggests a static, rigid society in which a traditional officer caste dominates an authoritarian and hierarchical state system. But while this image is still valid for many societies today, it fails to convey the particular virulence and dynamism of modern militarism—a scourge that threatens to obliterate all the gains made in the areas of human rights, democratic government, and economic progress throughout the world since the end of World War II. If not checked soon, this scourge will almost certainly trigger a global conflagration that could destroy the human species.

Consider: World military spending in 1977 reached the record level of $400 billion—more than the combined gross national product of the world's hundred poorest nations. Most of these funds, of course, were expended by the two superpowers, which now have sufficient nuclear weapons to destroy each other several times over.